UN Calls for Major Escalation in Somalia

Faced with the ever-growing prospect that the self-proclaimed Somali government and 8,000 African Union troops won’t be able to hold the handful of city blocks along the coast in Mogadishu which has, for the past couple of years, amounted to their entire domain, the United Nations is seeking a major escalation.

It remains to be seen what these additional troops can do, as it seems the escalation is quickly putting enough troops on the ground that they could stand shoulder-to-shoulder and span the entire trivial portion of territory occupied on behalf of the “government,” but every major attempt to annex new portions of the city has ended in a disastrous, and bloody, failure.